"We'd get drunk and go out after dark / Searching for someone we could take home"
Wow, it's been quite a while since I even logged in here -- let alone posted anything. I had a chat today with a work friend about the tendency our jobs have to suck up all our creative energy. So tonight I felt the need to open up my writing archives and take stock.
I've never been a huge fan of stories about the "children of our heroes," so I was a little suprised to find that I'd written this awhile back. It's a chunk of the epilogue from a longer series and fits in the with larger narrative... but mostly I just think it's kind of cool.
University of California, Davis
September 11
It's pebbles on her window, like they're still kids.
“I knew you were out there, Will. I was just kind of hoping you'd get tired and go away.”
Hannah looks like her mother, but she has her father's eyes. Will, he's the opposite, he's tall and lean, with a shock of dark hair and grey-blue eyes. They look, despite the differences in their heights and builds, like they could be brother and sister. They sort of are, if only by accident of familiarity and not by blood.
“Aw. Come on, Hannah. Why?
“Because I don't feel like chasing ghosts tonight. I have a test tomorrow.”
“See, that's your problem. Too much book learning.”
“Will, your mother is a doctor and your father went to Oxford. Stop talking like an outlaw from the Old West.”
“Does this mean you won't come for a ride in my Mustang?” He's sprawled in her desk chair, grinning insolently at her. She has to get him out of there before her roommate comes back.
Will has turned out to be quite a hit with the college girls. He's twenty-five and good-looking. They giggle and call him 'dark and mysterious.' If they only knew.
Hannah rolls her eyes.
Eventually, she gives in and climbs into the Mustang with him. He must have known she would (and, honestly, when has she ever said no to him?) because he left the car running in the dorm parking lot, lights on and radio blaring.
They drive and drive, out toward the coast and up the 101, a Volkswagen-commercial moon pink up above them. Will says there's something she needs to see as they cross over the border and into the sand dunes of Oregon. He pulls over just outside Gold Beach, parking the car too close to the edge of a cliff and straddling the guardrail with his long legs.
There are lights in the sky over the ocean, but Hannah doesn't believe in aliens.
Will says never to discount anything.
She tells him he has weird ideas about the world.
“But that's why you like me.”
And it's true.
She goes with him, very nearly every time, searching for a truth that keeps changing. She suspects, though she doesn't tell him this, that that's entirely the point. That truth is about the journey, it's about the questions not the answers, and that's something her father learned but his never did.
I've never been a huge fan of stories about the "children of our heroes," so I was a little suprised to find that I'd written this awhile back. It's a chunk of the epilogue from a longer series and fits in the with larger narrative... but mostly I just think it's kind of cool.
University of California, Davis
September 11
It's pebbles on her window, like they're still kids.
“I knew you were out there, Will. I was just kind of hoping you'd get tired and go away.”
Hannah looks like her mother, but she has her father's eyes. Will, he's the opposite, he's tall and lean, with a shock of dark hair and grey-blue eyes. They look, despite the differences in their heights and builds, like they could be brother and sister. They sort of are, if only by accident of familiarity and not by blood.
“Aw. Come on, Hannah. Why?
“Because I don't feel like chasing ghosts tonight. I have a test tomorrow.”
“See, that's your problem. Too much book learning.”
“Will, your mother is a doctor and your father went to Oxford. Stop talking like an outlaw from the Old West.”
“Does this mean you won't come for a ride in my Mustang?” He's sprawled in her desk chair, grinning insolently at her. She has to get him out of there before her roommate comes back.
Will has turned out to be quite a hit with the college girls. He's twenty-five and good-looking. They giggle and call him 'dark and mysterious.' If they only knew.
Hannah rolls her eyes.
Eventually, she gives in and climbs into the Mustang with him. He must have known she would (and, honestly, when has she ever said no to him?) because he left the car running in the dorm parking lot, lights on and radio blaring.
They drive and drive, out toward the coast and up the 101, a Volkswagen-commercial moon pink up above them. Will says there's something she needs to see as they cross over the border and into the sand dunes of Oregon. He pulls over just outside Gold Beach, parking the car too close to the edge of a cliff and straddling the guardrail with his long legs.
There are lights in the sky over the ocean, but Hannah doesn't believe in aliens.
Will says never to discount anything.
She tells him he has weird ideas about the world.
“But that's why you like me.”
And it's true.
She goes with him, very nearly every time, searching for a truth that keeps changing. She suspects, though she doesn't tell him this, that that's entirely the point. That truth is about the journey, it's about the questions not the answers, and that's something her father learned but his never did.